PlanetUSF

It is going to be weird not having her around the house. The wedding is december 9th and I am a bridesmaid. Her honeymoon will be in Hawaii. That’s awesome. I’m realy happy for her guys

I think Cellphones should be allowed in classrooms because sometimes we have an emergency and that’s the only way to get in contact with your family members when they need you. They should not ban them. Everyone need their phones . Even teachers can use their for emergency. Therefore if they take away the students then the teachers have to give theirs up. We all need it for some reasons. I know sometimes it’s unappropraite when the students uses it to text all day when the teacher is trying to teach something to the class.So that’s the only case where cellphones would be unecessary. And any other circumstances it is fair to have your cellphones. Now in days even students in elementary have cellphones. How can one ban something so wide used. ??? Every parents feel safer knowing that they can contact their kids easier and specially in times of emergency.If we ban cellphones in classrooms then alot of other places should ban them also like government offices and other places like that would only be far. I think New York is sort of late on this issue because this is not something new. A lot of schools have been talking about that down here in Florida and there are still no good solutions. Cellphones will remain in the classrooms for ever. In all states we keep cellphones that’s what i say. And New York is totally late on this subject. It has been a problem for way longer. Cellphones are important to have around

I preferred Project 3 because the guidelines in that assigned to talk about a problem and give a little history about the problem. Then argue that the probem can be solved. I was really enthusiastic about it because In my mind i have alot solutions to world problems. So I really enjoyed talking about issues like racism in Schools. I presented the problem, gave some history facts of it and then proposed a problem. At the end concluded with how my problem would work.I wrote the different cases that were brought to court to complain about the unfairness the school board’s system. There were over 200 complaints and that is part of the reason why minorities have more rights today. It’s thanxs to our ancestors that fought through boycott, picketing, sit-ins and other non-violent strikes to get our civil rights like everyone else. It was not easy but they sacrife a lot to end the injustice. Project 3 gave me a chance to express some of my thoughts of what was going on at that time and how we could fix it.Project 3 gave me a chance to argue my opinions and what i thought would be right. And It gave me more freedom. I really enjoyed that project 3 and i wish we could write more papers like that instead of anayze othe writers opinions. At times it is really hard interpret other writers. Writing is easier when you have more freedom to say what you want. I want more essays like that one.

I successfully dropped off the potentially late money order and application. The Salvation Army Correctional Services is located in what most would call the “ghetto.” The woman who took my application said I should be seeing something in the mail within the next two weeks and if I do not, I should call.
Approximately a week and ½ later I received the letter she spoke of. It contained my appointment with my first ever probation officer to explain the program. It also instructed to bring a $90 money order. One week later I mad my way down to the salvation Army Services again for my appointment, money order in hand. I was about 10 minutes early but had to wait an additional 25. The most intimidating part of my visit was the wait. I was by myself with about 30 other “criminals” in a large waiting room and I feel it would not be a far-fetched prediction to say many of them were on some type of illegal drug. I could not wait to get out of that waiting area, so when my probation officer finally called me back I pretty much ran to her. She led me back to her office where we went over the rules and regulations of the programs: no traffic violations, no drugs or alcohol, complete 16 hours of community service, and find, read, and print a copy of the Florida statute under which I was arrested. Then I received a receipt for my money order and went to meet with Mary the community service assigner.
Mary was the most rude woman I have ever exchanged words with. She did not look me in the eye once. She shot me two pieces of paper and said “choose.”
“Choose what?” I replied.
“Pick which place you want to do community service at.”
I chose a rec. center/park in my town. That should be easy enough I thought. She gave me a paper the people in charge at the park would fill out for me and said I was complete. I thanked her and was on my way.

Project Overview: In this project, you will write a position paper that explores the impact of the political parties and their leadership in Congress and their influences on the Executive branch and America’s foreign relations. Study how other cultures are influenced by our government and choose one specifically that has been significantly affected in the last decade. Explain how that culture has been affected, positively or negatively and how the Congress and executive branch influenced the decisions made. Form your position on this critical issue through a more informed perspective.

Genre: A position paper is designed to persuade and inform an audience about a particular concept or issue, through the writer’s opinion of the issue as the paper progresses. For this project, you will discuss our government and its involvement with a foreign government. Many people are concerned that this increased interaction among countries is often advantageous to powerful nations like the US, but harmful to those on the other end. Refer to Congress, both major political parties in Congress, and the executive branch/leadership in charge at the time.

Purpose: To become proficient at writing a persuasive essay that requires taking a powerful stand on an issue.

Audience: Write this essay for scholarly people, professionals, and even the common American Interested in the trends of political foreign relations in our country.

Voice, Tone, or Persona: Informed, persuasive, convincing.

Length, Format, Design: At least 1,000 -1,500 words; MLA documentation with Works Cited page. Annotated bibliography optional.

Assignment Parameters:
• At least two (2) of the sources should be books, reference works or articles (full-text electronic articles are fine); others can be websites, but make sure that these sites are reputable and scholarly.
• Your essay should be well argued and well-written, and your assertions should be supported by evidence.

Resources:
• Library resource databases are very useful for scholarly academic journals which are a great place to start. To access a database, first login to http://my.usf.edu, then select USF Libraries & http://library2.cqpress.com.proxy.usf.edu/cqresearcher/.
• The Lexis-Nexis Academic database, available through the USF virtual library. Also, always check the local or University libraries for textbook sources.

First, we were assigned to choose and analyze two articles. Our most recent topic was to address a social injustice and present a solution. Although all of the projects involved interesting topics, I would have to say the one I enjoyed working on the most was my project #2. The assignment was to write on the effects of globalization in the world including one specific area. My paper was on Singapore, entitled “Singapore: Great Prosperity by Globalization.” I imagine most students associated globalization with negative aspects but in my research globalization in this region affected most with great prosperity. I learned so much about Singapore while writing this essay, that now it is even one of my top vacation destinations. I knew of the city-state before but did not know exactly where it was or what it offered. Singapore is often compared to Disney World Theme Parks in comparison to how clean it is kept. It is located in between Malaysia and Indonesia, completely surrounded by water. Also, I feel it was easier for me to write than the other papers because I had just finished studying that region in my Geography class. Many things tied in with my research in class and the research I needed for my paper. I felt terrific about my paper when it was in it’s final stages and although I have not yet acquired my grade on the assignment, I am patiently anticipating the news!

So yesterday was the big day… Tommy gave me my very own Nintendo Wii with Zelda. Wow, he sure does know how to spoil me… although, he IS the one that played all night ;] I was having a bad day… so lucky for me I have a Tommy to cheer me up.

I still want to know… where am I going to get money to go to Cambridge over the summer? rats…

So we made it another year! If you are wondering what I am referring to, hurricane season of 2006 is now over. Not one hurricane hit the US this season, amazing. Only two tropical storms managed to hit US land. Last year according to www.msnbc.com 1,500 people were left homeless on the Gulf Coast. Scientists predicted this hurricane season to be full of excitement, and I am glad to say they were wrong. When living in Florida, I feel it is important for us to keep up with what is going on during the hurricane season. Most of us have lived through at least one these deadly storms and know the tragedy they can bring. So I felt it is important to spread the good news that we all made it through another hurricane season safe and sound.

Now, as I prepare my slides for my talk, and read more about the Bayesian approach to hypothesis testing, I realize that I have questions about it as well. This tells me that at least I am understanding it well enough to know what to ask questions about. They say that the Bayes factor is free of the prior distributions, and hence free of a great deal of the “subjectivity” of which Bayesians are routinely accused. But is the Bayes factor completely free of subjectivity? It seems to me that the denominator, the probability of obtaining the data given the alternate hypothesis, can be pretty subjective, too. Based on the simulation applet, I see that I have to type in the distribution of the alternates. Does this mean that they’re arbitrary?

Furthermore, if they’re using this applet to “prove” that P-values are interpreted wrongly, and P-values come from situations where the distribution of the parameter under the alternate hypothesis is unknown, (in fact, in Fisher’s sense, it is completely unspecified!) how can the choice you make for its distribution be anything but completely subjective?

I need to find this out.

Underoath used to be one of my favorite Christian hardcore bands. They came right out of Tampa, Florida in 1998 with members: Dallas Taylor with vocals, Luke Morton on guitar (who left the band before their first album was created) Corey Steger also a guitarists, and Scott Nunn on drums (who was soon replaced by Aaron Gillespie), and Octavio Fernandez as the bassist. Once signed to Takehold Records, their debut album Act Of Depression, spread like wildfire. There was only six songs on the record but had outstanding guitar riffs and violent double-bass kicks. More band changes followed in 2000 with the addition of Chris Dudley as their keyboardist and Matthew Clark on bass as well. Following that was the release of their second and probably most powerful album Cries Of The Past and with only five songs the album clocks out at almost an hour long. Its with this album that they got the most recognition from their loyal underground fans. With more and more changes being made to the band, die-hard fans started loosing interest when more and more band members were replaced and with that their legendary sound. Takehold Records was bought out by Solid State/Tooth and Nail Records in 2001 putting out another album perfectly entitled The Changing Of Times. But what sent fans walking in the other direction, including myself, was when Dallas Taylor who was the essence of Underoath left the band in 2003 due to arguing amongst the boys. He was replaced by Spencer Chamberlin and the band has since put out two more records, They’re Only Chasing Safety (2004) and Define The Great Line (2006.) Neither of their latest records I’ve listened to nor have I had any interest in doing so. In fact, once Dallas left, talk started about Dallas suing for rights to the bands name, since none of the original members remain, nor does their original sound. It’s a shame really.

I have chosen to explore WebMD because it is the most efficient.
1. Is the content of the website expressed clearly and efficiently?

The content if this website is definitely clear and efficient. From the
moment you enter the website you can see different directories
and such leading you to where you need to go.

2. Is the website organized logically?

In my opinion this is one of the most logically organized websites there
are. The homepage has a list of the top 12 health topics that really helps
to narrow down searches. They also have health centers shortcuts, A-Z
listings, and health solutions.

3. Are the text portions and graphics presented thoroughly and accurately?

The great thing about this website is that there is no clutter. Now a days
websites tend to put an overload of graphics, which tends to cause
confusion. WebMD takes you directly to where you need to go without
anything in between.

4. Is the website addressed appropriately and persuasively to a specific
audience for a specific purpose?

There is actually no specific audience; WebMD is for anyone interested in
acquiring information. There are so many different reasons why people go
on WebMD that you can not really narrow down the reasons. I guess you
could say a specific purpose might be to find out about certain illnesses
and how to cure them. The reason why anyone can log on to this website is
because the terminology is easy enough for everyone to understand.

5. Is it as effective as possible? Are there any social inequities
illustrated by the design of the page? Consider the concerns, perspectives
and values of the intended audience as well as the larger cultural
narratives that influence them.

I believe this website to be one of the most effective websites out there.
I also do not think there are any social inequalities. The opening page
illustrates different races of people with different issues. They also
show you different cures that do not necessarily mean getting a
prescription, for those people who cannot afford insurance. I believe
people of all cultures and social classes can appreciate the different
resources they can find from this website.

6. Are there missed opportunities? Offer ways in which the site could
improve. Feel free to compare/contrast your chosen website to others
dedicated to similar content that succeed or fail.

I really cannot think of any missed opportunities with this website. I
chose this website because I believe it to be an efficient one that really
helps people. I am sure that they have sponsors and such but unlike other
websites there is not an announcement trying to see you something on every
page.

7. As you assess the website, can you think of specific suggestions as to
how the site can be redesigned?

The only thing that I can really think of is putting more pictures of the
different diseases, so people can compare there problems with actual
problems.

I’ve been under the weather after a fabulous Thanksgiving with the parents and close friends. Even started some wedding planning!

But since I’ve been back, I’ve been dealing with my 2 sparring cats and grading papers. It’s strange, now that I’ve written that Katrina narrative, I feel a weight lifted and it’s hard for me to find stuff to blog about. I just want to keep re-working that piece, which is good if it’s moving toward the dissertation, right?

Anyway, despite my sinusy nose and head, I did read this and knew I had to share:

A Directory of Academic Blogs, Wiki Style

How many academic blogs are there? Too many for any one person to keep track of.

The popular academic blog Crooked Timber has long maintained a lengthy list of academic blogs. The list had been maintained in part by Henry Farrell, an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, but the task was starting to seem overwhelming. “I’d come to the conclusion that one person just couldn’t keep track of this anymore,” he said in an interview this week.

So why not open up the list and let anyone add to it? That’s just what the gang at Crooked Timber decided to do, using the same wiki software behind Wikipedia. The result is academicblogs.org, which went online in September.

It’s amazing! I added my blog under the list for Culture, Theory, Literature.

Go check it out and add your blog where you see fit!

This is something that always bothered me with the USF Security website: the .php extensions, variables on URLs, etc. Here’s a way to clean them up.

True Hacker!: Digg style clean URLs with PHP and Apache

If you’ve ever been out with me, I don’t make much of a secret of the fact that a take a special kind of pleasure in a good Belgian brew.

Sometimes finding one can be a challenge, though. Sure, there are sites like Coastr that take a a social networking approach to solving the dilemma of finding a new brew when your friends and bartenders are out of suggestions. Sometimes you want something more. Say you’re a block from the Russell Office Building and need to know the best place to hang around with some twentysomethings for beer and karaoke. MappyHour is your site.

It is also helpful if you actually find yourself in Belgium and need to find the best place to drink a Leffe for 2 Euros.

Yeah. You can go ahead and say it. I’m a beer snob.

Well, after all the tears and letters and long distance phone calls, I can finally say that this madness is ending. In approximately 36 hours, I get to see the love of my life once again. I hate saying “words can’t express…” or “there are no words to describe…”, but honestly I really can’t find any word to even match up to how I’m feeling right now. I am sweating excitement. Sometimes I wonder to myself, “Is all this worth it? Do I really feel as strongly as I do towards him or is it just an idea?” My best friend’s boyfriend is in the army as well (yeah, what a coincidence) and she said she felt the same right before, but the minute she saw him all of her feelings came back. I know it’s going to happen and I just can’t wait! After his graduation, where I only get to see him for about 30 hours if that, I’m basically going on vacation with his family without him, but it’s ok because I know I’ll enjoy it. Plus he will have his cell phone after graduation which is something I am QUITE excited about. I have a thing where I LOVE to text message and I am overly excited to text him again. Oh man, it’s going to be great. Once he leaves though, it’s going to be all over again with the counting of the weeks or days, but at least I’ll be able to talk to him you know?

I finally finished my training at Carrabba’s saturday night. I’ll miss some of the trainers, but I’m happy they are gone. Some of them were just a little too much to handle. I’ve made some decent money, but being on your feet for 8 hours straight is not something I want to be doing for more than just my college years I definitely know that one. It’s pretty blah right now, but I’ve been told it will get better. We will see.

The website I have chosen to do my paper on is www.myspace.com which seems pretty pointless since I know MANY of my peers are doing www.facebook.com or what not, but I like MySpace and I know I could write a good paper on it as well. At first with this assignment I had NO idea what websites to do, but after looking at some of the questions I’m going to have to answer I realized that MySpace would be my best bet. It’s weird, but I’m a little excited to write it because I know that it won’t be really boring.

I just got done reading “Cyberselfish” by Paulina Borsook on Motherjones.com. Very interesting read because it talks about the government and their involvment with technology and the internet basically. Borsook brings up ideas that politics are running the availibility of information on the internet and are focusing on regulating political view points rather than looking after open-ended chat rooms which allow a variety of controversial thoughts. Borsook also brings up the fact that helping out anyone other than the government is not going to get you anywhere. Borsook makes references to her sister, who has her masters in public health, and ex-boyfriend, and English teacher, both don’t make enough money to pay their bills. From what I got out of the article is that people who are financially set don’t realize how bad the economy is and the people who help point out the the government is not helping the people who need help don’t end up being financially stable. There are too many people falling into the governments traps by accepting money to help the government grow and be able to regulate more and more. The government is going to use the internet to continue growing. Technology is where money is nowadays and you need to worry about yourself to survive because without the help of the government, you can not possibly help the people who so desperately need it.

The website “Building Authentic in Virtual Spaces” really brings about some good questions. The website takes questions and throughts from a group of facilitators from a variety of colleges and universities. A lot of the questions and responses have to do with students going from an on-campus classroom to a virtual classroom. Most of the questions lean towards the fact that a lot of students will be more willing to work together if they are face to face rather than looking at a screen. Also, most students come different cultural backgrounds. Will bringing them together in a virtual classroom make it easier for them to learn or will their social differences create more problems. I honestly think that creating virtual classrooms helps students focus on themselves, not other peers. When a student starts a class online, they do not try finding out the backgrounds of the other students in the class. In my opinion, virtual classrooms are not personal and are designed to keep students focused on work and not on their fellow classmates. The only problem is grouping students. Will students be responsible and mature enough to communicate with other classmates, knowing that they will never have to confront this person ever in their life.

After completing the lessons in the Style handbook I find that the book lacks the proper techniques and teaching students. The main objectives for the Style handbook is to help the readers with their clarity and grace in their writings like the title suggests. The book gives many examples and ideas to make your writing better. I personally found the book to be terrible and not helpful at all. I could not understand much of the book and it definitely did not help me. I had lesson 9 for my presentation, and it was difficult for me to understand my lesson to teach it to the class. As well as my presentation, I found it difficult to understand the other presentations in the class. And the other presentations were straight from the book as well. I think it was hard for all of us to fully comprehend everything in the book. The examples for the lessons are very long and hard to find the meaning of them. I did not learn grammar that much in middle school and high school, so a lot of this is difficult simply because I have not learned it before. The wording is not easy to follow and overall the style handbook does not succeed in helping the readers. I hope in the future they use a different book, because this one is not successful and a waste of money.

Essay project for ENC 1102.

The requirements for my essay project would be as follows.
I decided to choose an essay project that would be a little more fun and interesting to college students today. I want the class to choose a rap or hip-hop song and print out the lyrics. Then read the entire song and find a meaning of the song. Also explain why you chose this song and this particular artist. After reading the entire song, I want the students to revise and edit the grammar, punctuation, and spelling in the song. As well as reading the lyrics, it would be best to listen to it as well. Include a biography on the artist as well.

The length would be as long as it takes to get the job done. It would be quality not quantity. Format would be MLA format.
Source Requirements- any sources available to find lyrics and information on the artist.

I want students to enjoy and have fun with the assignment. I know that rap and hip-hop is not enjoyable to all students, but this is an assignment that would really interest me. This assignment would allow students to be creative, too. After handing in the paper, the class could discuss and share the songs they chose and how they revised the lyrics.

The project that I enjoyed most was Project 3. I liked it because we got to choose a topic more personal or interesting to us. I felt the other two projects were a little more difficult for me, but project 3 was easier because it was more interesting. The other projects I had to force myself to research and they were not topics that I knew much about. Although the first project we had I enjoyed the topic of music censorship, I was not able to discuss my opinion on the subject. I had to explain the argument the writers were making. In project 2, I did not know much about the topic of globalization and it did not interest me that much, so it made it harder for me to complete the paper to the ability I did in the third project. The third project I chose teenage pregnancy because personally I feel that it is a major problem today. It disheartens me that so many teens are getting pregnant, neglecting their children, and ruining their lives. Teenage years are one of the best years, and I wish teens would enjoy them instead of rushing them. I will be 21 in a month and I could not imagine being a mother and having the stress of a parent. I would have missed out on my education and a lot of life experiences that I enjoyed. In project 3 I got to research more about the subject and put some of my feeling into it as well.

For Thanksgiving every year my family and I go to the Outer Banks, NC, specifically duck and Southern Shores. I always look forward to spending the week with my family, as it has been a tradition since I was very young. Now that I am at school in Florida and my family lives in Maryland, I do not get to see my family often, so I really treasure my times spent with them. This year my boyfriend joined us as well. He is in the United States Navy and is stationed in Norfolk, VA. He drove down and stayed for a couple days through Thanksgiving to celebrate with my family.
I left very early the Tuesday before the holiday, flying into Newport News, VA. Then I flew back to Tampa Saturday afternoon. I really wish I could’ve stayed longer but I had to work. Thanksgiving was a blast as usual. Every year my entire family runs a 5kilometer “Turkey Trot” Thanksgiving morning, and then head back to the house to finish cooking. Thanksgiving morning in the Outer banks was horrible; about 50 degrees and rainy but it actually cleared up around noon. We hold the meal at my family’s house and enjoy food, drink, and laughter late into the evening. This was quite possibly the best thanksgiving I can remember. My boyfriend joined us and we stayed in our new house right on the water. Besides Christmas, this is certainly my favorite time of year. I can hardly wait for another two weeks until I can make more happy memories with the ones I love!

I read today about a homeowner who put up a wreath that is in the shape of a peace sign. So what? It’s the holidays right? But this story isn’t about holiday decorations; it’s about how crazy some people become when they have different points of view. The home is part of a homeowner’s organization that regulates how houses can be decorated. While no one has a problem with plastic Santas or reindeer, quite a few people took issue with a Christmas wreath in the shape of a peace sign. While a few thought it had a satanic meaning, one man thought he knew exactly what was implied by the ornament: kill American soldiers. He stated that the wreath was a protest against the Iraqi war and it’s comparable to saying that the soldiers fighting there should be bombed. It’s sad when people bother about such insignificant things around the holidays. When did ‘Peace on Earth’ become offensive? The best thing about this story is that the man who is most upset is also head of the homeowner’s association. When the board he presides over voted that the wreath was inoffensive and should be left alone, he fired every single one of them.

TomPaine.com is one of the most interesting web-sites I have seen in a long time. There was an article about it in one of my textbooks and I decided to check it out, since then, I visit it frequently. The website is a collection of articles from different sources, showing different (usually very liberal) points of view, as well as commentaries and political cartoons. Even though I enjoy browsing the website, I have never really taken time to read anything about the people or organization that created it, so this project will give me the motivation to do so.

P-values are so universal. I’m surrounded by them. Every person who performs statistical tests talks about them. The only place I see Neyman-Pearson testing is in my textbooks.

It used to be simple, until I read that article about the confusion of p and alpha. Ever since then, I have been pretty unsure about what exactly I was learning.

What I really want to know, after reading so many very philosophically oriented articles on statistical inference, is exactly what we do know when we perform a significance test. And, what do we do? I guess the latter is decision theory.

The article I mentioned last time actually seemed to imply that scientific progress is impeded to the extent that it uses statistical tests. (!)

I know one area I’m not afraid to use statistics: quality control. There isn’t any other way to do some things except to take samples and make judgments based on them. I trust Z-scores to determine whether a process is out of control. But at this point I’m nervous about applying any statistical test in any other situation. I just don’t know how to interpret the results. Maybe in a few years, I will.